Tales of the Besieged
by Fullmetal Catalyst
Summary: While Operation Crucible raged outside, another desperate battle took place within the sealed arms of the Citadel. Amid the horror and death, heroes stood tall against annihilation. The Siege of the Citadel as told by writer-historian Urdnot Saldek. OCs and minor characters abound! Mild AU.
1. Saldek's Introduction

**This is an experiment. No idea how it'll turn out. Writing style will alternate between story form and narrative history.**

**Note: I'm not taking the Leviathan DLC (or successive DLCs) into account with this fic. In this story, the Leviathan of Dis was the former vanguard (replaced, by Sovereign, after its incapacitation a billion years ago). All other canon is intentionally vague, including the final battle at Earth. This has some AU elements, wonderful readers.**

**I've rated this M for a reason. Several, actually. The Siege of the Citadel wasn't just war. It was attempted extermination. Expect lots of character death, trauma, and probably some graphic scenes of all kinds. Urdnot Saldek doesn't believe in holding back, even if he _is_ mild for a krogan.**

* * *

_"We gave them up for dead. The Citadel had closed on them with a Reaper inside. But they fought...and they won." - Urdnot Wrex_

**###**

**Monuments:**

Everyone knows the story of Commander Shepard.

Or at least, we know enough. Enough to retell it, enough to celebrate her. We've read it in books, watched it in vids, lived it in games, discussed it on the net. Her deeds, her ship, her ground team, they'll be remembered for centuries, millennia. When we disappear, when our civilization falls, she'll remain.

I'm in the Presidium, standing before the great statue of her that draws millions of visitors a year. It's been a quarter-century since I last stood here, fresh from my Rite, and it seems like not a day has passed. There are just as many people gathered here now as there were then. No surprise; her effect on the galaxy was profound. Nearly every planet has its monument to her.

So why do so many people visit her statue on the Citadel?

It's true that the Citadel remains a commercial hub and economic center; though it suffered heavy damage during the Reaper War, the same can be said of every major planet. It's a political center, home to the Species' Assembly that replaced the old Council.

But culturally speaking, it's out of the way. Earth is finally on the rise again, humanity's homeworld a technological powerhouse. Tuchanka is an architectural wonderland, home to the best engineering schools in the galaxy. In spite of an early civil war, Rannoch has surpassed even Thessia in its prime as a center of art and music.

Yet year after year, Shepard's statue in the Presidium sees more visitors than the monuments at any of these. It alone handles more traffic than the average colony.

There's something special about the Citadel, something sacred that pulls the galaxy to it. Former capital of the Prothean Empire, and of countless civilizations before it. First and last place that the Reapers attacked. The station has a hidden history of legends.

And by all rights, it shouldn't even be here.

**###**

**Stalemate - a Brief Background for the Siege:**

By the time the destroyers poured through the Widow Relay, the galaxy-spanning Reaper War had stalled.

It was never entirely clear how the War _should_ have proceeded. Decades after the Reapers' destruction, we are no closer to understanding them than we were when Sovereign raided Eden Prime in 2183. Nor had we ever faced a conflict of this magnitude or devastation on this scale, not even during the Rachni Wars (1). Victory and defeat were unfathomable concepts in such a massive, existential struggle.

What we do know is that most battlefronts had turned into wars of attrition - which may have signified a kind of defeat for the Reapers, whose ability to cybernetically utilize our dead were not offsetting their numerical inferiority. Nevertheless, it had been established in a hundred engagements that the Reapers were emotionless, pitiless, and infinitely patient, traits that the galaxy simply could not afford to mimic. Shepard testified that they believed themselves gods...and as we have yet to crack the secret behind indoctrination technology, their bold claims carry more weight than one might otherwise allow.

In the end, it's all guesswork. However, we can surmise several crucial things about the state of the War from the circumstances of the Reapers' siege of the Citadel:

.-*-. Though the strike came without warning, _it occurred more than eleven weeks after the first Reaper sightings_. The Reapers could have moved for the Citadel at any point. Why now? Had their arrogance led them to assail us before they were ready? Or was this somehow part of the Reapers' master plan?

The Reaper-led Battle of the Citadel in 2183 was, for all intents and purposes, the Reapers' first overt, major move against the galaxy. Much has been written on the importance of the events that followed, namely those involving the Collectors (_which are covered extensively by more human authors than I can here recount; for enlightening quarian perspectives, see the memoirs written by Dris'sal vas Alage and Veetor'Nara vas Rannoch_) as well as the infamous Alpha Relay incident. However, the Citadel was the key. Taking out the Citadel had, according to remote interviews with the enigmatic Prothean Survivor, been the reason for the defeat of the Prothean Empire.

.-*-. Numerically speaking, _more Reaper forces were involved in the assault than on any single other warfront in the galaxy._ In fact, the Reapers all but abandoned most minor battlefields to assail the Citadel (a move that was mirrored almost immediately by the galaxy's inhabitants).

This was not due to the strength of the defenders - though the Citadel Defense Fleet was powerful, it had yet to recover from its mauling in 2183, and the outcome of the assault would see it destroyed. Yet the Reaper force was, even after engaging the CDF, strong enough to hold out against the Allied Counterstrike Fleet for nearly thirty hours. Moreover, the Reaper formation was situated in an ineffective defensive formation with major gaps. Before we pass it off as a simple mistake, consider that the Reapers knew about the existence of the Counterstrike Fleet, and nowhere else in the galaxy had they made an error of this magnitude. Several admirals, including Admiral Steven Hackett, suggested that had the Reapers not been forced to fight on such restricted terms, they would have vastly reduced our fleets' mobility, which proved vital to reducing our casualties.

.-*-. The largest known Reaper, the infamous Leviathan of Dis, led the assault. That the de facto leader of the Reaper forces - Commander Shepard's theories concerning the one she called "Harbinger" have yet to be substantiated and likely never will - made a personal appearance indicates the gravity of the situation. That it withdrew from a key engagement with the geth to do so only strengthens this point.

Recall that the Leviathan deliberately trapped itself inside the Citadel during the Siege. Had it been capable of engaging the Allied Counterstrike Fleet, the odds would have been tipped in the Reapers' favor. This was not a trap set for our navies.

.-*-. Most chilling of all, _the Citadel itself was, at the time, a gigantic mass relay_. Let's not forget this. According to Dr. Liara T'soni, who is by far the leading expert on previous "cycles of extinction" (2), the Reapers used it to leap from unmapped dark space directly to the heart of civilization. Though Shepard reported that she rendered this strategy impossible (_see Chapters 86-88, 90, and 93 of my book_ The Chameleon Who Fought), those who were present with her in Citadel Tower - including Dr. T'soni herself - expressed doubt that the damage was irreparable.

Retreat? Possibly. It has been suggested that the Reapers arrived in such force because they sought to escape, but this claim is absurd. None know the size of the galaxy better than those who harvested it in 50,000-year cycles; several of the Reapers involved in the invasion, it has been determined, had been hidden in various states of incapacitation on Zayarter, Logan, and Tarith. The Leviathan itself, before it was confiscated by the Hegemony, had not been moved from its resting place in an estimated _billion_ years. Had the Reapers wanted to flee, they did not need to assail the Citadel to do so.

Given that the _SSV Normandy_ SR-2 possessed a Reaper IFF (to which the entire Allied Counterstrike Fleet was slave-rigged, enabling Operation Crucible), by which the galaxy's defenders could bypass Reaper control of the mass relays, the assault on the Citadel cannot have been initiated solely to control the relay network, as some have argued. That said, there is no denying the strategic importance of the Citadel; many historians maintain that the Reapers believed they could override the relays' backdoor and lock the allied fleets in their respective systems to be destroyed at will.

Others argue that the Citadel contained vital information or a secret weapon that the Reapers had stashed away. The most common counterargument is simple: none have been found in the half-century since the War's end. Proponents of the theory remind us that we used the Citadel for millennia before ever learning it was a mass effect relay and that much of the Citadel was destroyed during the Siege. The Reapers' interest in Citadel Tower (_rendered ineffective by the Tower's unanticipated destruction_), which played a crucial role in 2183, lends some measure of plausibility to their claims.

Still others contend that the Citadel could be used as a communications hub from which to broadcast indoctrinating signals. Data from the mass effect relays and from the keepers on the Citadel (special thanks to the estate of salarian researcher Chorban for access to his private research) hint that this is a possibility, but scale analysts call it an irrational fear given the distances involved. Moreover, tests run in 2184 indicated that the keepers would no longer respond to external signals. Lacking a catalyst, they claim, the mass effect relays could not operate in such a manner.

And there are those, few but insistent, who murmur that the Reapers were attempting to bring in reinforcements, that what we call the Reaper War was itself just the beginning. That the entire force we faced was merely a strike force, a first wave. No evidence exists to support or refute this claim - after all, the Reapers failed. Most proponents of this theory are either extreme war hawks or paranoid authors...but whispers of whispers in the DeepNet suggest that the Shadow Broker has yet to reject it and to this day bends some of his immense network to searching the galaxy's edge.

Whatever the case, the Citadel's perceived importance in Reaper strategy cannot be denied. Nor can their capacity for calculation be underestimated. Considering the degree to which the Reapers deceived the advanced races (the indoctrinated Hegemony's invasion of Alliance space, the Battle for Rannoch, the tensions surrounding the genophage, the surrender of Kahje, just to name a few) merely to get _this_ far, it seems more anymore likely that they could only succeed by deception if they did not gain another significant advantage. It can even be argued that every battle prior to the Siege was but a destructive ruse.

We will never know. All we can be certain of is that the Siege of the Citadel was as pivotal to the survival of galactic civilization as the Battle of the Citadel three years prior.

*Notes*

(1) Comparing galaxy-wide wars is mind-numbing using even the most ruthless calculus; furthermore, not enough variables hold constant to make statistical analysis any better than guesswork. However, those who believe the Rachni Wars out-scaled the Reaper War in terms of devastation would do well to consider the theory, postulated by volus sociologist Ba'Sher and turian general Val Ardes, that the former was manipulated by the Reapers. For further reading, see Ba'Sher and Ardes' book _The Reaper Vanguard: Early Assaults in Our Cycle_ and the wildly controversial mega-bestseller _Mother's Last Song_, by the former asari courier Mleran.

(2) "Cycles of extinction" - the term is often referred to in the public conversations, published diaries, and recorded interviews of Shepard's crew on both Normandys. It is a reference to the Reapers' assaults on prior civilizations, such as the Protheans and the zeioph.

**###**

**Opening Salvo - the Reaper Blockade:**

The Reapers swarmed through the relay in packs. According to one survivor's account, it was like "watching a void open up in the nebula, a gaping chasm from which death itself materialized." (3)

Poetics aside, the relay jump must have been a terrifying sight, and the strange signal (4) as emitted by scores of Reapers would have struck fear into the most hardened defenders. They came through, weapons blazing, striking directly for the open Citadel. An overwhelming force whose overriding purpose was to make our civilization's heart stop.

To its credit, the CDF was not wholly unprepared. The STG had been feeding C-Sec intelligence since the first shots of the war - though even they were outshone by the criminal underground, which had maintained an erratic but impressively accurate flow of information ever since Sovereign's assault in 2183 (5) - and no fewer than seven cruisers had kept constant watch at the relay. Fooled once, they were hardly going to let their guard down with the fate of the galaxy in the balance. Moreover, the refugee flood brought news of unspeakable horrors and the deaths of planets: as a result, civilian fundraising led to the construction of nine top-of-the-line fighting ships of various classes.

On the ground, private and corporate investors had demanded the installation of no fewer than _two_ _thousand_ military-grade defense turrets, most of which were capable of blasting holes in anything smaller than a Reaper destroyer. Hundreds were oriented perfectly to aid the CDF in long-range space combat. Refugees and various ward militias had armed civilian ships for more localized defense, and the militias themselves numbered in the hundreds of thousands (_for more in-depth numbers and calculations, see Inoste's _"By the Numbers - A Record of Those Who Defended the Citadel in 2186").

In short, they would not go down without a fight...and this time, there were no traitorous Spectres inside the Citadel who might impede the defense.

Of course, no infiltration was needed. Their battle was lost from the start: a Reaper destroyer could match three turian cruisers shot for shot, and battle records show more than ninety destroyers present at the Citadel (with more arriving before the counterattack). Capital ships were even stronger, universally feared for their ability to devastate a battlefield if left unchecked. The CDF could do no more than hold the line until their inevitable destruction.

But it was the Leviathan's presence that turned the battle from courageous final stand into a rout. At nearly three kilometers long, it dwarfed every dreadnought in the galaxy. A single direct hit from its ponderous main gun could shatter a cruiser like glass, and numerous engagements had proven its mass effect fields capable of withstanding even the heaviest bombardment. Records from the third, fourth, and sixth weeks of the Battle of Palaven (_special thanks to Commodore Rotavin of the Homeguard for giving me access to this data_) tell us that the Leviathan could, if it poured all power into its shields, hold its ground for an hour against over fifty turian cruisers.

This was the Reaper that separated from the pack, blasting its way through the CDF's ragged picket line in a blind rush for the Citadel.

The arms began to close almost immediately, an act that would have stranded the CDF but protected the Citadel from enemy forces. Unfortunately, just as we had adapted to the Reapers' tactics, so had they learned from ours. In a lightning-swift FTL jump (6), the Leviathan closed the gap, appearing less than a kilometer from Citadel Tower.

The last that the beleaguered CDF - which, tragically, would be all but annihilated before the Counterstrike Fleet could arrive to relieve it (7) - would have seen of its beloved charge were the explosions in the wards as the Leviathan descended upon the station. Three cruisers were trapped with it, a death sentence; a fourth, having just finished repairs, awaited its crew, only thirty of whom ever made it.

It was a well-planned and clinically executed strike. The Reapers knew that no one was entering or leaving a closed Citadel, and the demoralizing news that the beating heart of our civilization was caught in the Reapers' grip might have tipped the scales in the galactic stalemate.

The Reapers were also aware that its initial supply of expendable soldiers was being depleted at an alarming rate. A respectable pre-war population supplemented by the uncheck stream of refugees totaled nearly twenty million, an army within its own right...an army that would be useful against the disturbingly large galactic force mobilizing for the counterattack on Earth. Some say that this was the Reapers' purpose, nothing more, and though the Counterstrike Fleet was on the way it was a plan that _should_, by the numbers, have succeeded.

All they had to do - and what they succeeded in doing - was cut this sizable population off from any possible aid and get to work.

Easy prey, no?

In one of the greatest triumphs of the Reaper War, the people of the Citadel thought otherwise.

*Notes*

(3) From "The Face of the Abyss" (anonymous). Taken from the essay anthology _Darksiders_, edited by human author Clara Jackson.

(4) For more information on indoctrination, see the essay series "Indoctrination: Insidious Whispers in the Mind", co-edited by Dr. Liara T'soni and the asari Shiala. Though I believe the potential combat effects of indoctrination are wildly exaggerated (a point on which Dr. T'soni and I disagree), even small migraines would have been enough to severely hamper the CDF's fighting effectiveness at a time when they needed every last ounce of alertness just to keep their ships intact.

(5) Chapter Seven, "The Queen of Purgatory", will touch on this. Most memoirs of crime bosses with ties to the Citadel will also mention intelligence gathering in some capacity. However, no complete record of the information flow exists beyond, presumably, the Shadow Broker's databanks.

(6) STG calculations after the battle, headed by one Padok Wiks, suggest that such rapid engagement and disengagement of its FTL capabilities would not only have trashed the Leviathan's FTL drive but also very nearly overloaded its mass effect core. No smaller ship, and no slower computer than a Reaper brain, could possibly have made such a jump and survived. Nonetheless, the trashing of its power source would have crucial implications for the siege that followed, for it was a severely disabled Leviathan that, now caged within the Citadel and firmly attached to Citadel Tower, fought against a united galactic center. In over fifty years, no historian has argued against the claim that if the Leviathan had managed to enter the Citadel without sustaining such damage, the Reapers would have succeeded. Numerous honors were granted, most of them posthumously, to the staff in charge of handling the station's arms.

(7) Few within the CDF survived the Siege, most of them in fighters and frigates that managed to elude the destroyer wolf packs until the Allied Counterstrike Fleet arrived. Three memoirs surfaced in the two years after the Siege, but they sold slowly. Readers wanted to hear of triumph, not of loss. It was only in 2202 that "Day's End", a joint production between asari and turian movie companies, brought the CDF's final stand into the public eye. Stark, bleak, and brutally moving, "Day's End" is widely regarded as the greatest war movie of all time. It is estimated that two in five krogan own a copy.

**###**

**Why I Write:**

Purgatory is like any other T'Loak-owned nightclub - blinking colors, deafening music, foul drinks, and a clientele as diverse as the galaxy itself.

I'm sitting at the bar, trying and failing to devise a suitable preface to this book, when several krogan sidle up beside me. I know immediately where they've been - Shepard's statue has its own unique scent, the smells of a thousand gifts and offerings overlapping with the faintly refined air of the Presidium. Fresh from their Pilgrimage, then - in my mind, they've just become true krogan.

I confess that I'm glad they're too young to know me by face - most krogan do not hold me in high regard, and I have no stomach for a confrontation on this night. Unfortunately, their empty pockets mean that I'm buying them drinks, and if you've ever had to buy ryncol for a party of immature krogan you know why this is a problem. You're essentially paying the bar's damages for the night, and a club the size of Purgatory has a lot to damage.

And a lot of patrons who will gladly add their own contributions to a fight.

This krant isn't too rowdy, but they're in a celebratory mood, and krogan celebrations usually involve broken, well, everything. I do my best to keep them occupied, and it isn't long before I have them dissecting a shotgun while I tell them about the early years. The aftermath of the Reaper War. Wrex's rule. A new beginning for the krogan...for all of us. Though they listen eagerly, I can tell they hoped for war stories. Perhaps I look older than I thought.

I consider telling them who my father was, just to get it over with, but I see no reason to start the fight myself. They find out anyway, a few hours in.

Ryncol is spilled, some tables are overturned, chairs are thrown, a security guard is head-butted, and I once again thank Vakarian for his Spectre training. It takes three dozen armed C-Sec detectives to restrain us - and arrest eleven other patrons who decided to involve themselves - and we wind up in a pair of cells, where three of the youths promptly collapse, the inevitable outcome of gallons of ryncol.

Inevitable, not immediate. When I take a moment to glance across, I see that the fourth is staring at me. The drinks have made him serious, if sleepy. He's curious.

"Why do you do it?"

I tell him. It takes several minutes, partly because it's complicated, partly because I'm mesmerized by his drunken swaying.

He blinks. "You really are an asari," he slurs. "You-" He leans too far to the side and crashes to the floor.

It goes like this.

My people love war. Even before the genophage, in the ancient culture that Wrex has tried so hard to revive, we celebrated the deeds of warriors. And warriors don't just fight battles. They live them, breathe them. They greet war as an old friend, or as a necessary and intimate companion. It's no accident that as our species was dying, we threw ourselves into whatever combat we could find. Those are our heroes. That's how we want to be remembered. A lot of the time, it's all we want to be.

The rest of the galaxy isn't much different, all told.

What happened on the Citadel in 2186 was nothing short of miraculous, yet with a few powerful exceptions (many of which I mention in this work), comparatively little has been written on the Siege. Why? Some of the most incredible tales of the War - of our _civilization_ - came out of it.

Listen, and I'll tell you. You'll hear of deeds in the most unlikely of places, from the most unlikely of people. A drell who kept the supply lines open against impossible odds. A nameless human female whose actions rallied an entire ward. Two lost souls, one a fanatic, the other a pilgrim, who found a purpose. The unlikely trio who battled through the burning Presidium to save someone they loved.

And you'll hear of the Siege's greatest heroes, too. Lovers who held the line, their small band against a thousand enemies. The asari matriarch who wounded a Reaper. The crime queen who refused to flee a second time. The C-Sec commander whose desperate tactics and cool head saved millions.

They made it possible for future generations to enter the galaxy's prospering heart. It's only right that we pay them the respect of hearing their story.

**###**

_About the author:_

_Urdnot Saldek._

_A celebrated historian, his knowledge and interpretations of the Reaper War unparalleled. A controversial investigator, banned from several major salarian colonies for funding attempted hacks on their databases. A prolific author, hailed for his rich and in-depth biography of Commander Shepard, The Chameleon Who Fought, the book that sold thirteen billion copies in its first ten years of publication despite some concerns over his storytelling style._

_Second son of the legendary Urdnot Grunt. Advisor to Urdnot Mordin, a rising star in Assembly politics and son of the interminable Urdnot Wrex._

_Professor, amateur archaeologist, journalist, drunk blogger, consultant, analyst, even a latent warrior. One could speak of Urdnot Saldek for two nights and a day and still leave much unsaid, both bad and good._

_But what intrigues me is how he, a krogan with a legendary heritage, began this unexpected, bizarre career._

_Saldek initially sought to live up to the (incredibly high) standards of his father's legacy. Even after his Rite, he seemed set to join his brothers, Karak and Altor, as Spectres under the tutelage of Garrus Vakarian. Something about his Pilgrimage, his journey to the Citadel, sparked in him a change - one that my husband noted when he returned to Tuchanka but to this day cannot quite define. Perhaps because it was less of a change and more of a revelation._

_Where most krogan focus on Shepard's battles, Saldek focuses on Shepard's life. Where most heard "peerless warrior", Saldek heard "decision-maker". Even my husband, a squad mate and close friend of Shepard, could not fully understand the Commander's new approach to combat after her death and rebirth - and it was Saldek who eventually found the answer._

_As the stories of the recent past took root in his mind, he found himself fascinated by these tales and wanted to share with others his reverence for them. Unfortunately, this came at the expense of his warrior heritage. Though many of our kind consider him a disappointment for this choice, a failure, he follows his path with single-minded determination. Thus began a journey of weaving together past and future, truth and myth, action and motive, and that has brought us Tales of the Besieged._

_He has become a medium. A connection between the glorious age of heroes and the prosperous galaxy that they brought about. If only in spirit, he became a true krogan after all. May he follow his chosen path until he stands at the feet of the heroes who inspired him._

_Even if he's a complete fool for not also training as a warrior. We krogan are long-lived enough to pursue more than one course with our lives. A boy who studied among the asari for a decade should know that, no matter how full of himself and his choices._

_- Urdnot Bakara_

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**A/N: To begin, how this is going to work. Anything in bold text is my rambling as author of this fic; everything else belongs to Urdnot Saldek in his recently published book, ****Tales of the Besieged - the Defense of the Citadel during Operation Crucible****. I'll still throw LOTS of story tidbits into the bolded segments, primarily stuff that didn't seem relevant to Saldek's chapter but might add perspective to his storytelling.**

**For the purposes of this story, the Reaper War is a little different from what transpired in Mass Effect 3. For example, the Leviathan was fully reactivated by Hegemony scientists in response to the Battle of the Citadel in 2183...an entirely rational move from a political perspective, but in hindsight probably not the batarians' brightest idea. There is growing support for the claim that those involved in the decision had been indoctrinated for some time. Nonetheless, the surviving batarians have faced (and still face) a great deal of discrimination for this act.**

**Most other references to the game are intentionally vague or unstated to allow for varying playthroughs and whatever head-canon you possess. This includes the ending, so don't ask. What I **_**will**_** say is that this fic builds on my short story "When Only Memory Remains", in which I tried to give the galaxy a faintly melancholy but otherwise amazingly optimistic aftermath. As such, the mood of the overall story will not be far from that of Destroy: a galaxy shattered and scarred by war but banding together to heal and slowly rebuild.**

**Now for the book itself:**

**Tales of the Besieged**** was published fifty-five years after the conclusion of the Reaper War. Urdnot Saldek began work on it seven years before that, still nearly half a century after the events of that day. As such, despite his feverish research and an impressive rapport with the Shadow Broker (whose identity he still seeks, to his friend Liara's amusement), many details were lost to the tides of time. Even the youngest survivors who remember the siege are now over sixty years old, and health complications (to say nothing of the lingering effects of ambient indoctrination) have plagued many a survivor. Saldek's book enters the scene as one of the most broadly researched works on the Siege, though it should be noted that others have gone into greater depth on specific subjects.**

**Krogan feeling toward Saldek is...rather negative. Primarily disgust (for his failure to live up to his father's immortal name), it also ranges from jealousy (for his sizable credit account) to grudging respect (for his dedication to his path) to simple bewilderment (at the nature of his career). Many say he's a krogan who thinks he's an asari; most of the rest call him an asari who thinks he's a krogan (most of the condemnation stems from the fact that his Rite was the last time he set foot on Tuchanka - in a lot of ways, he truly isn't a krogan). But Karak and Altor defend their brother's work.**

**Well, most of it. Saldek's tried his enthusiastic hand at novels before, twice, and both bombed spectacularly. They await this latest historical work, one written largely in story form, with a comedic mix of trepidation and resignation.**


	2. First Strike

**Day's End:**

Commodore Kaldor stared at the red light blinking on the console before him, wishing time would slow down. A minute, perhaps. Maybe three. Enough to rein in his fear.

_When you know what's coming, you start to expect it. You watch. You wait._

"Commodore, unauthorized entry in the Citadel Relay. From the other side." His lieutenant's voice sounded light-years away.

_But when you expect something for so long, the waiting becomes second nature. You get used to it. It's easy to forget its significance, what it means._

"At least twelve, sir. No, more. More than...oh, Goddess..."

She knew. The bridge, his crew, they all knew. Death was coming for them.

_Malkar spirits, we're not ready._

But he wouldn't get any more time. This was the moment they'd prepared for, watched for, hoped would never come. It was here. No more waiting. No more drills. Only the Reapers.

_Alright_.

The red light continued to blink.

With a swipe of his talons, Kaldor brought up the _Revenant's_ tactical display. Fifty cruisers, six dreadnoughts (including the Destiny Ascension) other than the _Revenant_, four human carriers on (now-permanent) loan from the destroyed Fifth Fleet. Four more cruisers docked at the Citadel.

He accessed the CDF's communications channel. _Time to act._ "Commodore Kaldor to Citadel Defense Fleet. Emergency code five-oh-three, space, six-six. Reapers inbound. I repeat, Reapers inbound. This is not a drill."

Gasps and cries filled the channel, but it warmed Kaldor's heart to see several ships already moving toward the relay. They'd fought hard three years ago. They knew what was at stake. They wouldn't hesitate.

He turned to Lieutenant Zykra, but she was already at the comm station, rapidly delivering orders. He could hear in her strained voice how tightly she was controlling her fear. _Best XO I've ever had._

The tall asari turned to face him, and Kaldor recognized the mask of duty she wore. He hoped he was wearing the same. "Citadel Control knows, Commodore. The station will be sealed in four minutes."

Kaldor nodded. "Then that's how long we have to hold. Send a Level One distress transmission to all major fleets. " Without waiting for confirmation, he punched the comm again. "Form up. Dreadnoughts in a picket line, cruisers spread out in bulk. I want them jumping into our crossfire. They do not make the Citadel." _Please, let me be a soldier_. "I repeat. _They do not make the Citadel._"

"Jump complete in five seconds. Stand by for proximity alarms."

A collective breath of anticipation -

Kaldor's heart plunged.

"Commodore..."

Looming in Kaldor's field of view was a monster.

It dwarfed the CDF's dreadnoughts. It dwarfed the other Reapers, destroyers and capital ships alike. It couldn't be less than four kilometers in length, and it was hurtling right at the _Revenant_.

A snarl. _You're the one from Palaven, aren't you? The Leviathan. The one that scourged a dozen colonies and half my home planet._

Sitting in front of it was suicide.

Letting it get to the Citadel was worse.

"Cruisers, find your targets. Stand strong, stand together. Once the Citadel closes, split into packs and distract the Reapers until reinforcements arrive. Good luck. Kaldor out." Kaldor gripped the railing of his command station, his chest filling with excitement and dread instead of air. Even if reinforcements arrived, they'd be too late for the dreadnoughts. "_Revenant_, we're taking this bastard head on."

The gargantuan tendril-arms opened, stretching across the sky, blocking out the nebula. Kaldor caught himself leaning away. The railing cut into his palms.

"Hit it with everything we've got."

**###**

**Aerial Defense:**

A stray Eyeball screamed across Taylor Jenson's path, barreling toward the open Citadel. Thirteen years of instincts pulled the trigger, and the enemy fighter exploded in a satisfying puff of flame and metal fragments.

"_Three Eyeballs on your back, Flight Leader. Pull right!_"

Jenson yanked the controls, risking a glance through his cockpit window as his fighter curled out of his tails' flight path. The glaring red namesakes of the Eyeballs as they roared past him sent shivers down his arms. _Like nightmares come to life..._

They'd seen him. No way they didn't. They'd just decided he wasn't worth pursuing.

Anger flashed and dissipated almost immediately as he realized where they must be going. These things were exterminators. If they were letting him live...

Why waste time on a single pilot when there were millions of people in the station behind him?

"_Einstein_, there are enemy fighters making for the Citadel." He checked his tactical display and felt his throat close. Another reason why they weren't firing at him - they could just run him down with sheer numbers. "A _lot_ of enemy fighters. I'm taking the Hounds after them. Any chance you can lend a frigate?"

The carrier's flight coordinator didn't even try to mask the tension in his voice. Jenson couldn't blame him. "_Negative on the frigate. Permission granted, Flight Leader Jenson, but we can't spare anyone. We need every ounce of firepower we can get up here. Don't take too long_."

Jenson swallowed hard, trying to ignore the relief he felt at getting away from the main combat_. This won't be any easier. We don't have enough by half_. "Roger, _Einstein_. Quick kills, then back to the party. Jenson out."

"_Good hunting. There are still a few cruisers launching - see if they can't help._ Einstein _out_."

He tapped his squadron's private channel. Twelve fighters against a fucking _storm_ of Eyeballs. "Hounds, cloud of small craft targeting the Citadel. We're hunting them down. Form up on Regal."

A sigh of relief broke the silence as the designated fighters detached from the battleground.

"_The fuck? Who the fuck was that?_" Frazier's voice shook, and not just with rage. "_You think this'll be a cakewalk? We should be up there. We're here to fight. Jenson, say something. You're in charge here._"

Jenson bit his tongue. The fuck was Frazier hoping he would say? They'd all seen the _Revenant_ destroyed in less than three minutes dueling the massive Reaper, witnessed the hammering that _six_ Reaper capital ships were unleashing on the beleaguered _Destiny Ascension_. If reinforcements didn't show up in a couple hours, they'd be reinforcing vacuum, and Frazier knew it as well as the rest of them.

_One thing at a time, Frazier_. "Focus on the mission. Watch each other's backs. Regal, you're calling tactics on this one."

"_Got it, Lead_," Regal said loudly, and Frazier's sputtering cut off. Even _he_ knew to shut up when the Hounds' ace had the comm. "_Leader's in point, Collo and Rita flanking. Rest of us follow them, three on Collo and five on Rita. Frazier, if any Reaper destroyers break the blockade, you and me are on duty to direct them to the cruisers._

"_No one hunts alone. No Eyeballs get to the deck._"

Jenson pushed his fighter's engines to the max. "You heard her. On me. We're taking them out, and then we're heading back out there."

Empty words. Even if they managed to clear out ten times and ten times again their number in Reaper fighters, surviving friendly fire while navigating the narrow passages above and between the wards, the Citadel would be closed long before they finished. This mission would see them sitting out the combat at the relay for the duration.

His pilots knew it, too. And they knew the relief, and the guilt at their relief, and the helpless anger at their guilt. But he felt he had to -

"_Jenson, bank left, _bank_ -_"

Reflex. Alarms blaring in his ears as his fighter jerked forward, yanking him back against the seat. His head slamming, stars and explosions in his eyes, fire gushing out of his right wing. Orange lights seared his eyes, then purple static, then darkness, then orange again.

When Jenson's world stopped spinning, the Hounds were scattered. No. Five of them were scattered. The others weren't on his display. Either jammed or dead. Dead, most likely - he couldn't see them. He couldn't see anything, except -

He stared at the behemoth occupying the space in front of him.

The Citadel had closed, the arms sealed shut. Most of the CDF was trapped outside, probably to die, but the station itself was secure. The civilians, the diplomats, the refugees, all of them: they'd be safe. No force in the galaxy, not even the Reapers, could do a damn thing to the Citadel from the outside.

But, impossibly, they weren't _all_ outside.

Jenson flailed for the comm, his hand limp and lifeless. On the fourth try, his finger brushed the right channel. _Our worst fears made real._

"Citadel...Citadel Control. This is Jenson." He shook himself, wishing he could blink the horror in front of him away, watching it drift silently before him. "C-Sec. Council. Anybody. It's inside. The Reaper, the big one. Gods, it's inside."

**###**

**Skyfall:**

The blue brightness of the nebula vanished as the Citadel's arms slammed shut, leaving only a pulsing red and orange glow.

It was not the usual lighting of the crowded urban cityscape. Alarms blared in every ward, as loud as they were unnecessary, adding to the din of evacuation as the Citadel's inhabitants ran for shelter.

But there was nowhere to go.

The Citadel elites had invested in squat, powerful turrets and gleaming titanium barriers. They'd put their faith in the sleek cruisers being destroyed outside the station, not in makeshift shelters that wouldn't last an hour. Their own safe houses were built to withstand anything short of orbital bombardment, but even those would only delay the inevitable.

There were fires, too, blooming in places where the station's shielding had not been concentrated enough to repel stray missiles from the battle outside. _That_ threat was gone now, sealed off, but the fire and smoke spread unchecked. Few of the emergency responders remained to handle them. They milled in the corridors with the rest, without purpose or direction.

Screaming, holding their heads against the reverberating signals that emanated from the Reaper above them, the Citadel's inhabitants watched their nightmare unfold.

Deliberate, menacing, the Leviathan drifted through the vacuum. It was so large that its midnight blue bulk seemed to suck in the hellish light. The Oculi rallied to it, a thousand tiny red lights swarming in chaotic rhythm around its enormous frame.

The Citadel's defensive turrets opened fire, thousands of military-grade towers shooting a round every thirty seconds with impressive accuracy. Their operators might as well have been throwing pebbles. Though red bolts arced across the Reaper enormous limbs, evidence of damage to its mass effect core, the massive ship absorbed the shots without so much as acknowledging their source. It moved without haste or care, an invincible ruler returning to its throne.

Heavier cannon fire pummeled it from behind. A trio of CDF cruisers, still docked when the Reapers had arrived and now trapped in the Citadel, tried in vain to draw its attention away from the Presidium, its apparent target.

When it reached Citadel Tower, the Leviathan folded its tendril limbs, just as Sovereign had three years prior. Lights blinked on its dark frame as it settled into place. The Oculi surged toward the cruisers, screening the Reaper from the cruisers' medium-grade weaponry, drilling at the turian ships with focused lasers.

The residents of the Citadel did not have long to panic at the sight. Small, dark shapes had detached themselves from the Leviathan, falling toward the Upper Wards in a rain of bodies. Some were vaporized by anti-aircraft flak from the defense turrets, but the overwhelming majority made it through the atmospheric shields, most of which were strong enough only to separate the wards from vacuum. Where they landed, panic turned to terror.

Sovereign had aimed to control only the station itself. The geth had left most of the wards alone, focusing their destruction on the Presidium to keep C-Sec occupied.

The Leviathan came to exterminate.

* * *

**A/N: M****ost people just call the Oculus fighter an "Eyeball". To the surprise of just about everyone in the galaxy with a working knowledge of Latin or Rome, the word "oculus" doesn't translate into the turian language, instead coming out as two meaningless growls.**


End file.
